Obsession, Clowns, Cosmic Bouquets, Vampires, Childhood Body Horror, Normalizing S*x Work, and MORE VAMPIRES - Reviews

Hello, beloveds. I'm so sorry it's been a minute. Moving to Philadelphia has been a hectic undertaking BUT I'm glad to be doing so. The good news, however, is despite the chaos, I'm still reading!

My god, 2024 has been an insane year when it comes to book releases. I started to compile my favorites from the year, so far, and it's already in the 60's. For those who remember the length of last year's list, it's definitely not looking shorter for 2024 (🙃).

All said, today features more recent and upcoming ragers from a variety of authors across the publishing board. Let's do it.

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Del Rey Books

I haven't had the spoons or energy to partake in the current Bookstagram meme-ry of "If (x) writes a book, I'm reading it," knowing me, I'd take it way too seriously and make far too many of them! However, one of the authors I absolutely would highlight is none other than Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Over the years, I've witnessed this author approach various genres, with each successive novel serving as an entertaining knockout. No matter the trope she's working with, Moreno-Garcia writes as though she's worked within these genres for decades and it's with The Seventh Veil of Salome that she trains her prowess upon the salacious world of classic Hollywood.

One of my most toxic traits is my insatiable love for gossip. I remain convinced that I am the reincarnation of a spunky, gossipy siren of earlier Hollywood celebrity culture. You bet your bottom dollar I would be flaunting my curves like a sultry floozy, cigarette hanging from a particularly long holder, smoke partially obscuring my features alongside the veil hanging from my journalists hat. My biggest tell: the blood-red lipstick parting to show my predator-like teeth.

Seriously though, I adore the trashy and downright ridiculous stories that came from olden-time film sets, causing modern celebrities to appear modest in contrast. This is where we find our cast of characters in a format reminiscent of the gossip rags of yore. Much of Salome is told from the perspectives of those involved with the fated production featuring heavily within the dramas foisted upon lead actress Vera Larios, a relative unknown who scores the role of a lifetime, igniting the ire of her co-stars, some of the crew, and a bit-player by the name of Nancy Hartley.

Being that Nancy desired the role for herself, her hatred toward Vera stokes ever-higher when her ex-fling, Jay, falls for the stunning ingenue. Caught in the maelstrom of all of this is Vera, whose mere inclusion sets off the Hollywood racism bells immediately. Misogyny, belittlement, pressure from her family–Moreno-Garcia deftly weaves the actresses story with that of the biblical Salome, creating a clear line of history continuously repeating itself.

As she tries to hold onto the role of a lifetime, the chaos ratchets up to a heartbreaking crescendo, revealing the depths of depravity one can plumb when consumed by obsession and jealousy. Salacious and serene, hilarious and heartfelt, The Seventh Veil of Salome is another expert dive into the speculative and spiritual, sometimes feeling like a sibling of Gods of Jade and Shadow and Silver Nitrate, respectively. Tying the lush mythical qualities of the Bible with the sin-crazed days of old Hollywood, this narrative promises a thrill ride like only Silvia Moreno-Garcia can deliver.

Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo by Adam Cesare, Harper Teen

Adam Cesare has the honor (curse?) of being one of the first books I read within lockdown once I was able to go back to work. I kept hearing lots about a new YA horror about killer clowns with a cover illustration for the ages. So, Adam, you were one of the early books to get me through the pandemic. Take that as you will!

I had a lot of fun with the first outing, and just a couple years later I found a post advertising the launch event for a SEQUEL! As soon as I got off work I ripped over to Children's Book World in Haverford and got the chance to meet this brilliant nerd (not derogatory), as well as hearing his stellar reading prowess. While I greatly enjoyed Clown in a Cornfield, it was Frendo Lives that became my favorite of the series.

Building upon the pulse-pounding premise of its predecessor, Frendo Lives upped the stakes and body count, delivering a sequel that not only built upon what made the original so compelling, but further improved upon it. Several years and a job later, the news of a third Frendo adventure crested the horizon. As sad as I was that ARC copies never got produced, Adam's plan of releasing it to everyone all at once was well worth the wait. The Church of Frendo went and upped the ante yet again.

This sequel is a far more isolated affair, predominantly focusing on Quinn's journey to get to the heart of the Frendo movement, as well as a small, insular community whose enigmatic new preacher is slowly turning the denizens into violent fanatics. As Quinn makes her way across the country, tracking down various connections to the wider Frendo cult of personality, it seems as though someone is two steps ahead, murdering those she seeks as though to egg her on, while planting a target on her back with authorities.

It's at the site of one of these murders that she meets a young man, whose juggalo brother is murdered just before Quinn gets there. At first their situation is fraught, but as the two work together for survival, it's clear that Quinn's loner tactics are only isolating herself further. However, nothing prepares either of them for the nightmare their approaching in Pennsylvania.

The Church of Frendo is a cogent analysis of extremism, cult mentality, as well as the most dangerous aspects of evangelist thought and organizing. While there is a central villain, the larger specter above it all is white supremacy and the fear of ceding control to those who threaten what they perceive to be their death-grip on larger power structures. Emphasis on DEATH-grip, as white supremacy is truly a death-cult (sorry not sorry). Sequences within the insular community felt reminiscent of Joan Samson's spellbindingly prescient 1975 novel, The Auctioneer, where a charismatic stranger arrives in a humble hamlet and proceeds to take over the town in a tale of unchecked and unsanctioned power and how it can quickly erode a community.

Suffuse with tension and horrific violence, Cesare's third installment is a brief pause for meditation amidst utter chaos, yet it refuses to give up hope, regardless of how hopeless things may feel. I have no idea what comes next, but I do know that I trust Adam to continuously wow me with each passing excursion into Frendo Country.

Flowers From the Void by Gianni Washington, CLASH Books

Alright, CLASH Books have to slow their gosh darn roll. Merely a few weeks ago I was freaking out about Daisuke Shen's jaw-dropping debut story collection, Vague Predictions and Prophecies, which is not only one of my favorite books of this year, but also of all-time.

Fast forward a bit–I finally tucked into Gianni Washington's new CLASH release, Flowers From the Void, a collection of weird fiction that spans genres and emotional spectrums. From its confounding opening set-up, which feels delightfully in concert with the Twilight Zone vibes of Cynthia Gómez's The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, to its screeching brake of a closer, Washington delivers an experience all her own, with characters–and creatures–you are not soon to forget. So essentially, another knockout freaking collection. COME ON CLASH!!!

Right as you open the book, Washington has featured one of many powerful quotes from Octavia E. Butler's seminal text, Parable of the Sower:

By the closing of the collection, the inclusion of this quote becomes clear. As a character in Butler's novel, Lauren Olamina is someone who sees and feels so much more than those around her. There's a feeling of insanity when the overall culture seems to know exactly what its doing and simply does not care that they're doing so.

Palestine is an excellent current example. For those who fight for the liberation of Palestinians from Zi0ni$t gen0cid3, every day is new footage of children being murdered, whole swaths of the West Bank destroyed, and yet our government continues to aid and abet the settler project. It's what they were built to do. They preach peace and empty promises of "ceasefire" while they send hundreds of thousands of dollars towards its continuation. The cognitive dissonance is enough to drive anyone mad.

For Black americans, this dissonance has been at the heart of their experience for centuries. Lauren is someone who witnesses this dissonance and attempts to build her own religion in Earthseed, ultimately striking out on her own when the inevitability she warns of comes to pass. Washington's stories follow in this tradition, skating that thinnest of lines between reality and the surreal to not only illustrate said dissonance, but give it teeth in a way that perhaps can rattle our brains enough to listen.

There are too many stories to note all of them here, but I will say my personal favorites are "Go, it is The Sending," "When I Cry, It's Someone Else's Blood," "In Between," and "Take it From Me." While every story is a delicious morsel of creativity, these stories were the ones that absolutely took my breath away, and made me cry.

"Go, it is The Sending" is a beautiful tale of a spellcaster working to join an arcane coven. Throughout we're told of her wife and their relationship before the wife's tragic death. This one will hit you so hard, you'll have a bruise on your cheek for months.

"When I Cry, It'd Someone Else's Blood" feels like a necessary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider," with all of the empathy and understanding that the former attempted, but upon further scrutiny, unfortunately lacks. In this story we learn of a creature whose rendezvous on earth brings them to a fascination with the village children–with their eyes, specifically. It's a complex tale where the horror delivers, but there is so much more beneath the surface, and the darkness, multifaceted.

"In Between" brings an original spin to the subgenre of "shadow horror" as author Vincent Tirado has called it. A young girl who is born without a shadow faces racial and religious prejudice, but meets a shadow named Avery who becomes hers. Though this comes with its own stipulations... The story is unnerving and beautifully haunting, as many of the great speculative fiction tales are.

And finally "Take it From Me." Taking place in a world where it's fairly easy to lose body parts, a woman is dumped and details her life dealing with the losing of these pieces of herself. One day, she begins to receive body parts that fit from a mysterious neighbor who appears to be looking out for her. An unusual connection forms and the woman begins to reclaim what was once lost. This one really got me–as a visceral metaphor for the pieces of ourselves that we lose and sacrifice for those who might mean to harm us. It is truly gorgeous.

I cannot recommend this book enough, and I am eager to see what Washington creates next, as I know it will be within a scope that we could all learn from.

Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod, Hedone Books

2024 has definitely been having a vampire moment. As we'll see yet again, later in this review post. Yet, leave it to Scottish author Lindz McLeod to provide something totally unlike our vampires of yore.

I've been wanting to read McLeod's work for the last couple of years, and it's thanks to my bestie, Caitlin Marceau that I had a chance with Hedone's release of Sunbathers, a post-apocalyptic climate horror where the most insufferable of our elite society become sun-hungry energy vampires, creating an even more powerful hierarchy where those left as human must remain in caves during the day to avoid the powerful sun, as well as the superhuman energy vampires that wait patiently to kill and consume them. Sound oddly familiar?

ANYWHO, our central protagonist–or antagonist–Soph is one such survivor. Craving the familiarity of living life untethered once again, plus desiring the perks that come with being superhuman, Soph gives into her greed and outs herself to the vampires, joining their ranks as trial by (literal) fire. Super excited to be unbidden by human weaknesses, she quickly learns that the commune where these cannibals live is not the utopia she though it might be.

To start, it's incredibly heterosexual, with any form of sexual deviance violently punished. It would appear that things kind of continued being hierarchical after a bunch of folks were given untethered power! WEIRD. To queer Soph, however, this is its own nightmare, and when she finds herself caught up in a raid on a band of human rebels, it's a member within these ranks that ignites the fire of passion within her yet again.

This arrangement continues, despite the immense danger that it presents to Soph and her new lover, and it's when one of the other vampires discovers this tryst, joining in with voracious hunger, that it becomes clear something has to give. It would appear that the vampires are attempting to create a device that would do away with nighttime entirely, dooming humanity forever if it is successful. Will Soph sacrifice her new "freedom" to save her former race as a whole?

Well, you have to read and find out.

A delirious and hysterical descent into madness, Sunbathers is social critique at its most precocious, poking holes in the narrative of superior races, while showing the larger pitfalls of social-climber attitudes and what it means to align oneself with the oppressors. Short, sweet, and bloody as hell, this is a quick and spicy little novella you won't be able to resist sinking your teeth into.

An immense thank you to Caitlin for the print ARC <3.

A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons, Tor Nightfire

My gosh, what to say about A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons...It's sort of difficult to describe and talk about while attempting to avoid spoilers.

Take some of the best aspects of heist/action movies and mix it with the most nauseating body horror descriptions and dump it into the hundreds of buckets of blood used in the lawnmower scene in Braindead/Dead Alive, then dump THAT in an ocean of blood, and you get a pretty close approximation of this book.

To call it insanely fun feels slightly deceptive, but it is the easiest way I can think to surmise it at this time. A bank heist goes wrong, causing Anne Heller to get out of dodge, fast. Carrying her gravely injured friend, Jessup, and a kidnapped cop, she escapes to her old cabin, where many years before her mother whisked her away into the night, only to be attacked by a strange entity that took her mother away from her.

Once at the cabin, naturally, shit gets mighty weird, and one night Jessup is dragged from the house and brutally disemboweled. A day later, who turns up at the cabin but Jessup himself??? But oh, that's not Jessup...what is that wearing his face...?

What follows is an insane, high-octane ride through hell and back, balancing the cosmic horror of John Langan's The Fisherman, and Todd Keisling's Devil's Creek, with the pulse-punding calamity of Heat. Throw in some ACAB and queerness, and you have yourself the delightfully dark and depraved A Mask of Flies.

This is my first engagement with Lyons's work, though his previous novels have been on my TBR for the past few years. I am glad I started with this one because it truly is some of the most fun I've had listening to an audiobook, with Saskia's Maarleveld's stupendous narration. She truly ratchets the tension in the best ways.

I also want to give a special shoutout to Teo of @nosferateo_ fame on Instagram, who sold this book to me perfectly and laughed with me as we tried to make sense of how the characters survived so many of the grievous injuries they incur throughout the book. Seriously, it's nuts–in the most action movie way possible.

All Hookers Go to Heaven by Angel B.H., Invisible Publishing

When Alicia Elliott comes into your DMs after you express interest over a beautiful book cover and title, asking if you want an ARC for said book...you say yes.

I was truly excited to receive this book as its cover, title, and subject matter immensely intrigued me. Mag grew up in rural Canada under strictly evangelical parents. When she goes away for a church event and meets another girl she falls in love with, youthful tragedy strikes when Anouk is discovered having sex with one of the boys in their program, with the two being forced to marry and carry on their lives elsewhere, sending Mag into a spiral of shame, self-doubt, and upset.

Once she gets out of her rural roots, she finds herself living in the city and struggling to find work. When she finds herself drawn into a local strip club, her story begins in earnest as she dedicates herself to sex work, sending her across country lines and into dangerous situations as she comes to terms with her sexuality, the struggles of sex work, and her eternal soul.

While I was fortunate enough to grow up with parents who would not steer me one way or another in terms of religion, it still surrounded me everywhere in rural PA. Our laughingly "secular" high school was about as secular as a church's bake sale, and the surrounding Bucks, Montgomery, and adjacent counties were very much God & Country, if you catch my drift.

As a queer little agnostic, I vacillated between feeling at home with the church kids and feeling completely ostracized by them, as well as the school at large. Our GSA was restricted in every way that mattered, art students were mostly unable to hang pieces throughout the school (that was designed by architects who design prisons)–it was definitely the opposite of what conservatives are saying about public schools in that area now. Nothing has changed except for the severity of the outcry.

All of this is to say that as I read this novel, despite not growing up evangelical, I saw a lot of the way I moved and was moved throughout the world by those who were meant to "protect" me. To be clear, I am not talking about my parents when I say this. I'm talking about principles, church leaders, teachers, security guards–the list goes on and on. Angel B.H. truly encapsulates what it means to wrestle with the shame and fear that arises from being queer in a super anti-queer area.

It's in part why it took me so long to realize my gender dysphoria. I was afraid enough coming out as Bi in that godforsaken school.

What B.H. has accomplished with this novel is a bit of a look into what it means to be a sex worker in our contemporary age. As we continue to fight for their work to be seen as legitimate, and, most importantly, LEGAL–this narrative serves as a story amongst many that takes aim at the structures that cause some to turn to and rely on these marginalized professions. It's my hope that more writers find the spaces to write their stories.

My biggest thanks, again, to Alicia Elliott, and be sure to check out her incredible work as well. Her novel of last year, And Then She Fell, remains one of my favorites.

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison, Berkley Publishing

It was all but a matter of time before Rachel Harrison came for the coveted subgenre of vampires. In but a matter of days, she will release her newest nightmare, So Thirsty, upon the unsuspecting world.

There is much of what we've come to expect from Rachel: friends with complex friendships, kind of not great boyfriends/husbands, feminine rage. But there is another underside to this tale in that it grapples with feminine aging.

Our protagonist, Sloane, feels trapped within her life. She's married to a man she knows continues to cheat on her and time seems to continuously pass her by. With her upcoming birthday, age is a creeping specter just waiting to strike. When the husband rents out a cabin for her as a way of celebrating her birthday with her best friend, Naomi.

Where Sloane can seem fairly mild-mannered, Naomi is a chaotic opposite, however, they've always seemed to level each other out. When the two are invited to the home of some wildly eccentric folks, what appears initially as a sex orgy that Sloane wants no part in, turns to horror when an emaciated creature springs from the basement and attacks her and Naomi. Uh oh, the creature was a vampire. They're ALL vampires. In a quick and fairly unfair choice, the women are turned and instead of staying with this group of fairly ethical vampires, alongside the charming and mysterious Henry, they strike out on their own. There's just one problem: who's going to help them control their newfound thirst...?

This book is a hell of a lot of fun. You feel the push and pull between these two friends as they try to figure out how to move on when their lives, and choice, are taken away from them. This is definitely one of Rachel's more deeply emotional books, which I know is kind of silly to say, but the horror truly feels secondary to a tale that's primarily about aging and friendship. The vampires are a lovely added touch! Much like how The Return was an absolute gut punch for me, So Thirsty seems to return (ha ha) to what made that novel so heartbreaking in so many ways.

Where perhaps Black Sheep was a fairly dramatic and bold explosion of feminine rage, there's something even more earnest and, dare I say, gentle, in how Sloane comes about her revelations, embracing herself in ways that feel right for her. It's sort of like taking a step backward, not as a form of regression, but a way to conserve energy after exerting the energy that radiates from So Thirsty's predecessor.

With bountiful amounts of her signature wit and heart, Rachel Harrison knocks it out of the park once again. What a blessing it is to continue to read her work, as well as be her friend. Thank you so much for the ARC, Rachel.

And that is that! Thank you so much for bearing with me as I attempt to catch up. Moving is hard and writing can sometimes prove even harder. I know this is a bit of a longer one, but I hope y'all enjoy nonetheless.

Keep your eyes peeled, because I'm going to be working on pieces looking at the works of two YA horror authors in the coming weeks, so if that sounds like your speed, stay tuned!

See you all soon <3